Tofa soifua
by inkedinserendipity
Summary: Maui returns too late to the seas of Te Fiti. (Or, alternatively: In which Maui's "Goodbye, Moana" becomes prophetic.)


Happy Valentine's Day!

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Maui's never been one for praying. It's not that he doubts the gods exist - they raised him, he'd have be both willfully blind and ignorant to ignore them. It's more that he prefers to rely on himself. Other people, as millennia of experience has taught him, are unreliable.

Maui prays now. To all the gods he can think of - to Taema, Tilafaiga, Tagaloa, even Te Fiti. He tosses desperate pleas toward the sky like falling stars, plummeting toward the earth and burning before they get too close to the sea.

Just let her be alive.

He wishes he could say he'd forgotten. That there had been a ship-repair kit on the boat. That she had the Heart of Te Fiti. That Moana was pig-headed, with a stubbornness to rival his own. But in truth, he'd forgotten none of those things - he hadn't wanted to think about it, so he didn't.

And it had worked really well. Until Mini-Maui decided to pop in and remind him that hey, if there's any mortal that's going to try to face down a lava monster alone to save her people, it's Moana. It'd taken a little bit of cajoling and a lot of overcoming denial but he'd finally conceded that, yeah, Moana would never turn back from this.

With or without him, she would carry on. She is Moana of Motunui, and she has never turned from the face of danger. She boarded the Kakamora to steal back the Heart, leapt into Lalotai with hardly a backward glance, threw herself in front of Tamatoa to bring back Maui's hook. Death does not faze her.

The peaks of Te Fiti loom into sight, and Maui allows himself a sigh of relief. The rocky crags are conspicuously lava-monster-less - Te Ka still sleeps. He must have passed over Moana as he flew. Maui is about to circle Te Fiti, to intercept Moana before she arrives, when a flash of orange catches his eye.

It's little more than a speck on the stormy seas, the brief glint of something too bright and colorful to belong on this desolate hunk of rock. Curious, Maui circles cautiously toward it.

As he soars over the barren outer ring, Te Ka does not emerge. The whole place is oddly gloomy and silent as Maui flaps into a tight descending spiral. The wind whistles past his ears until he flares his wings outward to still his momentum; and then, abruptly, he cannot fill his lungs with air at all.

Atop the water is the outer hull of a boat, charred and burned. Beneath the wood, straggling with the deck pointed downward, the bright orange of Moana's sail - of their sail - gleams even in the dull light of Te Fiti.

Maui's heart plummets down to his talons. In a flash less consequential than thought he lands with two feet on the hull. His arms fly out for balance, but it is not long until he hits the water once more, because the boat splinters between his toes.

Without thinking, Maui turns himself shark and dives beneath it. He cannot let his panic stop him now. Maybe, _maybe_ he was not too late - the boat was still warm, the damage recent, maybe Moana is still alive -

A flash of green catches the corner of his eye, turning his gaze toward the bottom of the sea. It's the Heart, he knows before he reaches it, that damned Heart that _keeps taking from him_. He wriggles toward it, the pressure building in his head until he feels as though it could split. Down and down he swims, hoping that the Heart will finally mean life.

With one hand curled around the Heart of Te Fiti, Moana looks almost peaceful. Like she were sleeping under blankets of water. Her hair shivers gently around her in the quiet currents of the bottom of the sea.

It is almost poetic, he thinks - or maybe cruelly ironic - that Moana would die in the sea.

Maui's fins turn to hands without him realizing. For a few senseless moments he keeps swimming downward, mistaking the pain in his lungs for the fire in his chest, all instincts removed except _get to Moana_. It's not until he runs entirely out of air that sense reasserts itself and he turns himself back into a shark.

On the bottom of the ocean, Moana does not breathe.

This, Maui realizes through the thrumming in his ears, louder and more powerful than any _haka_ , this is what it feels to be determined. Or perhaps it is desperation. He cannot tell the difference any more - all he knows that it is not logical, to wrap his fins around Moana and drag her upward, but he does so anyway. He leaves the Heart at the bottom of the ocean like the useless trinket it is.

She cannot be dead. She is Moana of Motunui, a warrior and a voyager, and she cannot have died in the arms of the ocean.

Returning to the choppy surface of the sea is a struggle. Fins were not made for grasping, but Maui will not give up. Eventually, struggling against the howling currents and the pressure trying to force them both back to the floor of the ocean, Maui breaks the surface of the waves. In an instant he is human again, and he presses Moana close to his chest as he gasps for air. Maui keeps one hand gently beneath her head as he pulls them both to shore.

He thought that he knew what drowning felt like, those millennia ago. He had no idea. When he was younger, he was scared of the ocean, terrified that it would come to collect the debt out of which it had been cheated.

There is no fear in him now. Only narrowed determination, aching muscles and gritted teeth, that Moana will arrive at Te Fiti. For she is Moana of Motunui - aboard her boat, she had sailed across the sea. And though she could not make it to Te Fiti alone, he will take her there. In this final task, he will guide her.

Eventually, Maui drags both himself and Moana to the shore of Te Fiti. The ground is sharp and unforgiving, devoid of softness and life, pricking against his feet and tearing open his skin. He pays it no heed. Once he clears the water from his throat, he turns to Moana.

That last hope vanishes. Even in the open air, she does not breathe.

"No," he whispers hoarsely, because this is impossible. Moana was made for living, for singing and dancing, not for lying lifeless on the shores of Te Fiti.

"No," he says again, louder, to the wind and the sky. Again, to the ocean, which beats frantically against the shore. Again, to Te Ka, who does not dare show her face.

Again in a roar, to himself, hard and furious.

He slams a fist into the ground, cracking it clean through. The ocean rushes into the sudden gap, driving a wedge through Te Fiti.

Again, to her Heart, that has taken Moana from him.

LINE BREAK

Without thinking, Maui dives back into the ocean. He cannot look at Moana for another second. In little time he is once more at the bottom of the ocean. He grabs the Heart between his teeth, resists the urge to shatter it, and swims as fast as he can to the surface. His muscles ache so hard it feels that they would break but he does not relent.

In an instant he is at her side. He takes a moment to smooth her hair, then sits next to her, rests her burnt back against his knee. The Heart of Te Fiti is warm in his palm and for the hundredth time that day, he prays.

"Okay. You create life, right?" he asks, shaking it a bit to make sure it's listening. It beats steadily under his palm. "Good. I'm going to need you to fix - to save - "

Maui takes a deep breath, willing the quaver in his voice away. This will work, because it has to.

"I'm going to need you to help Moana," he tells it quietly, voice cracking on her name. "Just...do your life-y thing."

It pulses at him, listening quietly. He shakes it. "C'mon, do something!"

Nothing.

Maui grits his teeth, unable to stop the panic webbing out from his stomach. "I know you're listening," he growls at it, suppressing the urge to rap it against the rocks. He cannot afford to lose it. He cannot lose Moana. "Fix her!"

And then, because his luck is stellar, Te Ka picks that moment to hurl a fireball at his head.

Only now can Maui hear her furious cries past the panicked ringing in his ears. Maui grabs Moana and leaps to one side, heat singing his ears as he passes. He curls instinctively around Moana's limp form, shielding her from the fire that scalds his back.

He's almost glad, in a way, that Te Ka is here. Now he has someone to fight.

Maui is seconds from turning hawk and destroying this demon, when he thinks of Moana. Instantly, his grasp on his hook lessens. This is not the path Moana would have chosen. Moana would have wanted him to right the wrong that he committed so long ago.

He wills the pounding of his own heartbeat to calm. He drops his hook to his side, letting it swing from his warrior's stance. Instead of raising it to fight, he flicks it to flee.

Up the cliff he darts, arms full of feathers once more. He swerves away from Moana's prone form, drawing Te Ka's fire toward him instead, and it is the work of several adrenaline-filled moments to avoid Te Ka's wrath.

Te Fiti is gone.

For several moments Maui hovers, shocked, over the rocks that once held Te Fiti's spiral, agape at the sight. There is nothing of the life that had once bloomed here. Instead there is little but rock and churning sea and, if he peers closely enough, a trench with the silhouette of a woman.

Te Fiti is gone, and with her Maui's only chance to save Moana.

Now, _now_ he does not care what Moana would have done, the path she would have chosen, because Moana is dead.

It's with something of relief that Maui drops the Heart. It clinks down past the reef and into the sea with less significance than a splash. His warrior face is a shield, a buttress between himself in the rest of the world. There are no prayers on his lips as he launches himself into the sky, because there is nothing left for him to pray for. All that he had has been taken from him by Te Ka.

And for this, Maui will smite her.

He's not sure if the piercing cry that erupts from his beak is a laugh or a challenge. His blood is pumping through his veins again and the songs of war sound in his ears and he is viciously glad to be a predator once more, to retreat from the soft warm thing that had loved so much and lost everything.

Limb after limb Te Ka loses. There is nothing of merriment in this fight. Maui will inflict pain, and her cries of outrage will not stall him. Arm, leg, neck - Maui does not distinguish. So long as his broken hook does not shatter, he will fight.

(Te Ka is a being of fire and earth. She is as unending as the sea; for Maui there can be no victory. Yet he continues relentlessly.)

It becomes a pattern of ducking and swiping and breaking and fighting. It is only a matter of time, he knows, before Maui is struck from the sky. His lungs fill with ash dozens of times over before he slips, swerves where he should have slashed, and her hand of ire and fire knocks him from the sky.

Maui feels the sting of the rocks against his back more keenly than ever as he slams onto a small outcropping that juts painfully from the sea. It takes him several seconds to regain his wits; and when he does, Te Ka looms over him, hands gleaming as her fingers spit flames that coalesce into a fiery ball.

He moves to lift his hook, but it is nothing more than a broken hilt on the ground. He moves to stand, but finds that his legs do not respond. He moves to speak, and finds that he has air in his lungs only for a laugh. So he huffs that laugh, then uses the little remaining to whisper a challenge. Let her smite him.

Maui has resigned himself to dying, to seeing Moana again in Tagaloa's realm, when something small and wet slams into his face.

Shock revitalizes his limbs. Maui looks over to find the Heart of Te Fiti skittering along that outcrop. His first instinct is to throw it back to the sea, but by chance as he looks away from it he sees the spiral of Te Fiti as it looms toward him.

Te Ka.

From this close, it is painfully obvious - her core is a spiral.

The demon's eyes latch onto the Heart a mere half-second after his own. She shrieks, surges toward it, and screams again in frustration as she nearly collapses into the water.

On the rock, hefting himself with his last thread of determination to his feet, Maui is strangely calm. His task is clear. Te Fiti cannot reach her Heart by herself. She needs a guide. She needed Moana, and she got Maui, and that will have to do.

(Part of him hopes, selfishly, desperately, that he can use this penance to bring Moana back. It is this hope that carries him through the waters of Te Fiti, back toward the barrier islands, onto the crags and mere feet from Te Ka.)

He holds the Heart out like a shield. The fire of Te Ka dissipates under the sight. Maui does not approach her; he made that mistake once. He sets her Heart on the ground, raises his hands to show himself defenseless, and backs away.

Reverentially, Te Ka touches the Heart. She does not spare him a single glance as she takes it, fingers flaming still with fury and wrong, and settles it into her own chest.

LINE BREAK

Apologies come easier than prayers, now. Te Fiti sits with him on the outer ring of her island, letting him stand on a hand that she would probably rather close in a fist, and listens to him.

"What I did was wrong," he says, and part of him wants to laugh because the way things are shaping up he wonders if he's ever done anything right. "I'm sorry."

From somewhere, Te Fiti conjures a smile for him. He smiles back as best he can through a laden heart. From here he does not know where he will go. Hookless and homeless, he does not even know who he will be. He does not even know who he _is._

(There was someone, once, who might have known.)

A question niggles at the forefront of his mind, the voice soft and sweet like the cool breeze off the ocean at the end of a hot day.

Maui tries to speak her name. It lodges in his throat and stops the words from coming. He cannot; he looks at her and begs her to understand. "Smite me," he asks, quietly. "You can smite me, I don't - that's fine. But Moana -" his voice breaks, _again_ , and if he fails he doubts he'll ever be able to speak her name without this pain shooting through his chest "- Moana didn't deserve to die for what I did. If you can, Te Fiti, please..."

For a long moment, Te Fiti regards him. She offers no ultimatum, just studies him with an uncomfortable scrutiny, face giving nothing away. Then she stands, turns her face toward her island, and the ocean parts for her. Far below him, his hook lies in shattered pieces on the ground.

She sets him down by Moana, folds herself smaller so that she can nearly look him in the eyes. Her island is still dead, still coated in hardened black. Then she lays a hand to her chest and nods.

Maui does not need to ask. He picks up Moana, cradles her to his chest, then offers her to Te Fiti.

Somehow, as she lays a hand on Moana's chest, her eyes are gentle. Maui looks away. The air hums with energy and life, the first breath of wind in a thousand years.

"Maui?" a weak voice asks, and Maui's heart soars.

"Moana?" he replies, and reclaims her instantly from the goddess's arms. He settles her against the ground, runs a hand over her skin to make sure the burns are gone. "Moana, you're - oh Gods..."

"I'm fine, just a bit...what happened? Oh, don't - Hey, it's okay," she says, and her voice strains like she's _concerned_ , and it's only when she reaches out to brush a hand against his cheek that he realizes he's crying. "Stop that, Maui."

"I'm sorry," he says, because today seems like a good day for apologies. He can't meet her eyes. "I'm sorry, Moana. I shouldn't have -"

Her hand reaches his chin, and she tugs his face upward to meet hers. The sheer affection in her eyes makes him cry anew. "You came back."

"Too late," he responds, trying to still the shaking in his shoulders. "I came back too late."

"But you did. You came back." Though her movements are unsteady, labored, she pulls herself into a sitting position and wraps her arms around his chest. "That's what matters."

"Moana, you _died_ ," he protests even as he pulls her closer to him.

"Huh," she says against his shoulder, her words kind of muffled into the palm tree, and there's a hint of amusement in it. "I knew something felt weird."

Maui can't help a nigh-hysterical snort of disbelief at this ridiculous mortal. At Moana, who vanquishes death - _death_ \- with a cheery smile. Then his composure breaks, and Maui sobs all his relief and anger and joy into her shoulder.

He can feel grasses sprout beneath her feet. Around them, the island of Te Fiti swells, the smell of honey and cinnamon once more in the air. It grows warm, the rhythm of the sea calmer. Above his head life itself springs back into the world, but Maui does not look up.

He has found home in the arms of a mortal, and never again will he leave.

LINE BREAK

Fun fact: The title of this work, _tofa soifua_ , is a Samoan farewell. One literal translation puts it at "sleep in good health".

Even more fun fact: In the novelization of _Moana_ , Maui asks Te Fiti to smite him.


End file.
